Welcome to [a belated] Wednesday’s Wellness Clinic. I can promise you I am not a doctor, a psychotherapist or a preacher, just someone with a lot going on inside her head looking for a way to calm the storm and impart that wisdom to you.
Ok, I know I said I’d be keeping up my wellness tips even
during my weeks off but last Wednesday, Mother Nature came calling and left me
feeling in need of some rest (ladies, we all know how that feels) and
even last night, I was feeling pretty sleepy. Plus, I also thought that the topic
I was going to cover needed more than a week for me to get to grips with. So
here we are, a fortnight after my last entry, here to talk to you – in my own
amateur style – about meditation. To be honest, I definitely could’ve given
myself longer to explore the intricacies of this art (a whole month perhaps) and
maybe, later in the year, I will revisit it, but even in this short time, I
feel I have learnt something about how my mind and body respond to different
forms of meditation.
As early as November last year, I was already starting to practise
meditation, using the dedicated pages in the back of my ‘i am here now’ book to
log some of my sessions. These were simple seated exercises whereby I focused
on my breath, a central element to the practice, and imagined each one as a
wave breaking on a shingle beach: in as the wave draws back, sucking at the
stones, and then out as the wave gently crashes down again. I tried to
visualise the beach too though my brain refused to get the perspective right. While
I didn’t get very far with these, it was a start and certainly an easy one for
a beginner to try.
I then moved on to guided auditory meditations which included a 15-minute session with British writer and speaker, Alan Watts, and a second longer one provided by The Mindfulness Project with Tara Brach (both linked below). Watts’ session is particularly unique in that he asks you to treat sounds and thoughts, and even your breath, as mere ‘happenings’, things which happen to and around you which shouldn’t need to be analysed or judged. The gentle bell sounds in the background really helped to calm me. Brach, meanwhile, takes you on a 25-minute voyage of your body and mind, and helps you to open yourself up. The lack of sound apart from her voice made this one a little difficult to stay focused on, but during my first session I somehow became aware of the simultaneous vastness and confinement of my room, which was freeing yet bizarre. I also found a couple of other videos and channels on YouTube (linked below) which focused on things like:
- sleep – something I have, fortunately, rarely had problems with, though this certainly helped slow my body down by focusing on deep breaths
- overthinking – something I, conversely, do all the time. This one, while long, was very reassuring and backed by the gentle sound of metal wind chimes
- manifesting desires – I wasn’t too sure I needed this one, but the female guide made me feel stronger and just happy to be there
And as I listened to these videos, I started to pick up some
of the shared techniques which I included in my unguided meditation sessions. Straightening
the spine, for example, to allow for deeper breathing; letting thoughts come
and go, neither forcing them from your mind nor becoming distracted by them; and
focusing on particular parts of your body, like the contact points with your
chair, their temperature, or if any part is feeling particularly tense.
But whether I did it guided or unguided, I came to realise
that meditation needs to be something you enter without expectations, because if
you start with the idea that 10-15 minutes later you’ll be feeling on top of
the world and you finish the same as you started, you’ll get dejected and give
up. What you need to do is simply ease yourself into it, take yourself through
the body checks, the breathing, the calm acceptance of thoughts, even indulging
in background noises like bird song and the gentle hubbub of the world if
possible, and see where it takes you. Treat your session like an aimless car
journey: you have no idea where you’re going, but so long as you stay in control,
it will be an enjoyable ride.
Where you conduct your sessions is also important because
you need to be comfortable. I have tried meditating at my dining table after
breakfast, sitting cross legged on my bed, and even in the shower, all with varying
degrees of success. The table helped me to keep a straight back but wasn’t the cosiest
spot I could’ve picked unlike my bed which allowed for that sense of vastness I
mentioned earlier (provided I sat in the right place). The shower was a unique
one, offering the sensation and sound of water and the clarity of mind which I
often experience while showering, but I think I will need to try this one again
to know how effective it is. This is why making notes after your sessions is so
useful as it helps to remind you of what worked, what didn’t and how you felt,
allowing you to adjust your next session accordingly.
Of course, the bottom line is meditation isn’t for everyone
(nor should it be taken as a once-only cure-all for what ails you), but there
are so many ways to do it that, if you try for long enough, even just for a few
minutes each day, you’re bound to find something which works for you.
Links:
Tara Brach [scroll to bottom of page] – http://www.iamherenow.com/
Alan Watts – https://youtu.be/jPpUNAFHgxM
'Great Meditation' channel (including Manifesting Desires) – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN4vyryy6O4GlIXcXTIuZQQ
Overthinking (Michael Sealey) – https://youtu.be/1vx8iUvfyCY
Sleep (Goodful) – https://youtu.be/aEqlQvczMJQ
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